We now have the transcript of the president’s interview with Hur, and, to my astonishment, it’s worse than that. It turns out that the special counsel mischaracterized and overstated Biden’s alleged memory lapses. He consistently adopted an interpretation that is as uncharitable and damaging to Biden as possible.
Gratuitous is bad enough. This was gratuitous and misleading.
This isn’t to say that Biden’s performance was perfect, or anywhere close. He’s always had a penchant for mangling facts, and I don’t doubt that has worsened with age. After the Hur report was released, Biden blasted the special counsel for having brought up the painful topic of his son Beau’s death. “How in the hell dare he raise that?” the president asked. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
In fact, the transcript shows, Biden was the one who first mentioned the timing of Beau’s death.
“So what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30?”
Two aides chime in with the year, 2015.
Then, according to the transcript:
President Biden: Was it 2015 he had died?
Unidentified male speaker: It was May of 2015.
Contrast this with the damning account in Hur’s report: “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, Hur defended his conduct. “My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair,” he said. “I did not sanitize my explanation, nor did I disparage the president unfairly.”
Well, that “even within several years” characterization seems unfair to me.
And it’s not the only example. Hur’s report also notes that Biden’s “memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Biden.”
But the totality of Biden’s references to Eikenberry, who was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2009, when then-Vice President Biden was lobbying President Barack Obama not to send more troops to the country, presents a less definitive — and less damning — picture of Biden’s memory.
The first time Eikenberry comes up is during a discussion of the troop surge. Obama “knew I had a real difference with the key foreign policy types, particularly — whether it was Eikenberry or whether it was — anyway,” Biden said. Did Biden merely say Eikenberry when he was thinking of someone else — or was he misremembering the position of a key player in the Afghanistan debate?
Of relevance in determining that, Biden returned to the topic of Eikenberry’s position later in the deposition — and then he stated it correctly. He described telling the president, “You know, ‘I had a long conversation with Eikenberry, yes, I urge you to call him before you make a decision. Karl can speak for himself and he has eloquently in some of his cables, let me relay just a few things. Adding troops will not speed up the ability to train Afghans because …’ etc. So these are criticisms of the proposal that was being made to the president by, by others in the administration wanting him to double down.”
Somehow, this later, more flattering recollection, didn’t make it into Hur’s report.
It’s always hard to judge a witness from the words of a cold transcript. Hur was in the room, and he left with a clear impression of what he considered Biden’s “diminished faculties in advancing age.”
I read the transcript from the perspective of someone who’s watched Biden — and watched him stumble over his words — for decades now, and I came away with a different impression. Yes, there are numerous instances in which the president appears unnervingly clueless. “If it was 2013 — when did I stop being vice president?” he asked at one point. At another, “In 2009, am I still vice president?” To me, this is, at least in part, Biden being Biden — working through out loud what the rest of us do silently.
Hur is entitled to his own interpretation, and it’s relevant, as he explained on Tuesday, to his assessment of how a jury would assess Biden’s conduct. Hur said he needed to “show his work” in explaining his decision not to pursue charges.
But the special counsel well understood that his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland would be made public — and he understood, or should have, the political fallout that would result from his scorching assessment of Biden.
So, he had a dual responsibility here, and he failed twice. First, he went beyond, far beyond, what was necessary to outline his concerns about Biden’s memory, and how that would impact any case against him. Second, as we just learned, his recitation of the facts was one-sided.
“Necessary and accurate and fair,” Hur said. I’d say he was zero for three.
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